


The Cedar Tree

by Oceanbourne



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: F/M, it's a weird relationship but i'm trying as best as i can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 13:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15559179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceanbourne/pseuds/Oceanbourne
Summary: Ares was beginning to understand. The icy look in her eye. The way she answered with abnormal calm, carrying out her duties, but deigning to do no further.“My heart has frozen over.”





	The Cedar Tree

Ares always prayed alone.

He realized what he did was nothing like what the Bragi priests did when they sat down to pray with their brethren or knelt in the pews of their churches for hours in solitude. The rituals of the clergy had direction, following an orderly sequence. The kind of thing you could repeat hundreds of times.

His own prayers had no such structure. Whenever Ares prayed, he didn’t look for some holy building, or some sacred relic. He didn’t offer up praises to Naga, or ask for the gods’ intercession. He only looked for a cedar tree, whose thin leaves he would spy every so often during his travels, and sit down among its roots. There he would lay down his sword, recline against its trunk, and speak to his mother and father.

The conversations didn’t last long, and were terribly one-sided, but it reminded him of their sacrifices. Amidst the myriad of casualties lost among the war against the empire, it anchored him above the never-ending despair, a solemn light at the end of the tunnel. Following that path wouldn’t bring them back, but it would be the closest thing to giving them something to be proud of that he could get.

That kept him afloat as he drifted, Mystletainn his lifeline in the wine dark sea. Every cedar tree was an island, a temporary oasis of respite as he wandered with Javarro, looking for a sign of land where he could finally walk ashore.

Seliph had guided him to land once more, and Ares was indebted to him. Yet he continued to cling to his cedar trees, always finding time for them. And on those days, whether it be in the dawn before the sunrise or the afternoon after a long march, he would continue to pray.

Ares didn’t expect this day to be different, but where he expected solitude, instead he found a figure occupying his usual spot between the roots of the cedar. She stood, her back turned towards him, gaze riveted on the whorls of its wide trunk.

Sometimes people followed Ares’ trend and retreated to the woods on their own time. Ishtar, though? He quirked an eyebrow. Most of their army shared their hopes, their dreams, their fears whenever he found another person in the forest. Often these conversations came unprompted, as if the quiet compelled them to fill the silence. But Ishtar never liked to share. She spent most of her free time alone in her room in Leonster, where he and Tine and many others had come to help rebuild the Thracian peninsula. Ishtar wouldn’t bring her sorrow out for the world to see.

He stopped in his tracks, thinking of taking a step back and turning around. His weight shifted, and her head perked up - had he snapped a twig? - before whirling around. Her eyes were just starting to burn a bright blue, but he could see how they had glazed over, like water turning to ice, as she detached herself from the world and trapped herself inside her thoughts.

“This is your tree, isn’t it, Lord Ares?” She spoke the words with the sort of composure an actor would have after practicing its delivery a thousand times.

Ares had met her a couple of times before he joined Seliph’s army. Once, when Javarro had offered his services to her father, Bloom. Friege had refused, but he remembered Ishtar, poised and confident even back then. She could already use Mjolnir, and Ares demonstrated similar skill with Mystletainn. From there, they had developed a mutual respect for each other, two wielders of holy weapons. Second, when she had come to Darna herself with Ishtore, announcing their declaration of war. That Ishtar was agitated and war-weary, as if she had already fought that battle and carried its fatigue.

_ By then, she was already engaged to Julius… _

Even as Ares eventually turned around to fight with Seliph, Ishtar was still chained to his side. He’d been the target of one of Mjolnir’s devastating bolts, only escaping incineration by guiding his horse out of the blast in time. When she surrendered to Seliph, Ares was one of the few she sought out - only to apologize to him for the attack and steal away like some kind of rogue, rather than the acquaintance he’d thought he’d made.

_ Did he take that away from you, too? _

Ares shook his head. “Not mine. It’s just a habit I’ve been doing for some time.” If she wanted to say, he wouldn’t get in her way. He walked up, standing next to her, looking at the branches of the cedar, how they spread over them to provide a canopy shading them from the sun. Maybe Ishtar only wandered out here because she could stay in the shadows. Out in the field, there was nowhere to hide from the sun’s glare. Sometimes the light was stifling, overbearing.

“My mother died in the empire’s attack.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, looking down at the roots. “I remember screaming for us to go back, to get her body - but there was no time. We rode and rode until the screaming and the fighting stopped, and there was a grove of cedars. That’s when I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

Ishtar turned away, her shoulders slumped. “My father led several divisions during that invasion. I… can’t help but feel responsible.”

“You shouldn’t.” Ares shook his head. “You have much to bear as it stands.”

Ishtar’s eyes softened for a moment, as if she wanted to reach out, but then the ice returned, and her emotions crystallized.

“These times are… complicated.” He watched her slowly inhale, afraid to let her breath go too far from her. “I cannot let myself stop for too long, lest the world pass by.”

“Is that why you sit in your room whenever you have a moment to yourself?”

Ishtar blinked, her lips parting, trying to find a protest.

“Doubtless there are plenty of affairs in Friege that need attending. But you’ve come out here, now. Even in the forest, the world is larger here, open. No walls to lock you in.”

He doesn’t mean to push her away, but he feels this will be one of the only times he’ll see her. Once reconstruction has finished, and the euphoria of peace melts away, everyone will go their separate way. And apart from Tine, Ishtar would have no one to turn to. Friege would become isolated when every other duchy could make amends. That wasn’t right. That kind of resentment would only stir up trouble again.

“You’re correct.” Ishtar hazarded a gaze at him, fidgeting with something on her left hand. “I wanted to see what drew everyone here. Maybe some magical spectacle. Or a country rumor. But this  _ is _ just a cedar tree, isn’t it?”

Ares nodded. “The only thing special is the meaning I’ve given it.”

Ishtar lifted her right hand, and Ares could see the object from before: a ring. It was made of gold, a small lightning bolt carved onto it. “My father gave this to me for my sixteenth birthday. Matching rings for Ishtore and me. One of the last times I enjoyed my time with them… before Hilda began to drive us apart.”

Ishtore. The general that had guarded Castle Melgen. Ares remembered - his change of heart led him to change sides, and suddenly he had an entire host of enemies, instead of just the one. At the time, Ares only saw Ishtore as one of the obstacles in their way. But the more and more they fought House Friege, the more fragile the house became.

_ And now… _

“It’s the only thing I have left to remind me of them.” Ishtar continued. “But it represents all of Friege. All the years we spent playing into the Empire’s hand, only to be torn to shreds.”

“The ring is your cedar tree.” Ares frowned. He had associated his parents’ deaths with Sigurd, and in extension, Seliph. But then Nanna had delivered him a letter from Eldigan, with the truth written on it, and everything had changed. No longer did he have to associate his hatred and thirst for vengeance with his parents’ deaths. But for Ishtar there was no deception. The Liberation Army had killed her family. They did so in the name of light, to expel the darkness from the land, but their wounds still dug deep.

“You could condemn us. No one would blame you.” He had not gone against Ishtore or Bloom themselves - but he had fought Julius. To the very end, until Tine had brought Ishtar to her senses, Ishtar had surrendered herself to standing at the devil’s side. Whether it was out of coercion, with no choice left to her, or of sentiment for the Julius she knew before, she had opposed them not once, not twice, but three times.  _ I could condemn her, too, and no one would blame me, either. But I know she’s not that type of person. _

“I can’t.” Ishtar’s hand shook, and she curled her fingers around the ring, making it a fist. She didn’t speak for a long time, concentrated on the cedar tree. Walking up to it, she placed a hand on its trunk, her fingers slipping through the ridges in the bark.

“I came here for another reason,” Ishtar said, turning back to Ares. “I thought going outside - looking at what really happened, facing my reality - would bring out something in me. I want to help, but it must be sincere. It must come from the heart. And…”

Ares was beginning to understand. The icy look in her eye. The way she answered with abnormal calm, carrying out her duties, but deigning to do no further. Why she always kept herself locked in her room, speaking only to Tine, avoiding even Seliph and Julia.

“My heart has frozen over.”

To hear that admission with not so much as a hint of guilt or remorse, as if coming from a machine, felt like an icicle was held to his neck. He pulled at the lapel of his shirt, a hand reacting by itself and moving to Mystletainn’s scabbard. Ares felt the pommel. Warm. Even out of battle, the blade still seemed to maintain a living consciousness. He needed that warmth in the wake of Ishtar’s chilling words.

“...Frozen over?”

Ishtar draws her cape around her, a hand clutching her forearm. “I did not weep for Julius. Not when the man I knew died, nor when the demon that took him away did. When the Isaachians threatened me and drew their blades on me, I did not cry out. I raised my voice, I prepared Mjolnir - but I did not let everything out. And when I returned to Friege, to preside over my dying house, the men and women who gave their lives for me - I wanted to shed a tear, but all I could hear was the lightning and the thunder.”

Ishtar turned towards the tree again. “I want to hate someone, but I cannot look at Prince Seliph or Prince Leif or you and feel a fire welling up in my heart. I want to forgive, but I look at what all the children I could not save, their ashen remains as they were sacrificed to Loptyr, and I know I am a monster that doesn’t deserve forgiveness. But I look at myself…” Ishtar holds up her ring and stares at it, her words catching in her throat. “And I know I could never conjure up even an ounce of self-pity, for the pride I don’t feel for being of House Friege won’t allow it. I just…”

She carried on in that same monotone voice, devoid of feeling, a rose that withers but cannot let go of its leaves.

“I want to feel something. Anything. But there is only the numbness, and the hollow howling of the wind.”

To stand on the edge of oblivion, and hear only the call of the void, was something familiar to Ares. How many jobs, how many missions would he have to carry out until he would finally reach his goal? Riding with Javarro felt like an endless hunt with no satisfaction. Only when they settled down in Darna did he meet Lene, and his perspective changed forever.

It only took a single person to get through the barriers he had held up to open his heart. If he could do the same for Ishtar, could he melt away the lock inside hers?

“When was the last time you removed your gloves, Lady Ishtar?”

Ishtar looked up, cocking her head.

“And I don’t mean to eat, or bathe, or sleep. Have you ever removed them in another’s company?”

Ishtar couldn’t respond. She only looked at her hands, the long white sleeves of the glove covering them up all the way to her elbows. Then, with a glance at Ares, she pulled at one of the gloves, removing them from her fingers and sliding the fabric down her arm. When her hand was free she wiggled her fingers, expecting to find some reaction in the air. It looked like she felt nothing, and she looked at Ares again.

“Let me see your hand.”

Ishtar kept her hand still, clinging onto her arm with the other, but eventually raised it, lifting it up gradually in front of her. Ares stepped forward, reaching for it with his. He placed his palm against hers, exposing himself to the frigidity of her palm. He repressed a shudder, and looked at Ishtar. Maybe she’d have a reaction.

“I… don’t feel anything.”

Ares’s face fell, and after a few seconds, he relented, pulling his hand away.

“Lord Ares, I am-”

“Don’t,” Ares cut her off. “It’s as I said earlier. You shouldn’t feel responsible. There’s enough already for you to handle. If anything, I should apologize that I couldn’t help you.”

He was not a man of the people, and didn’t hang on a person’s every word, learning how they ticked. All he could do was return the kindness Lene had given him to someone else in need. Maybe he wasn’t the right person. Maybe she needed someone else. But as he was turning to leave, he felt arms on his sides, wrapping around his waist. Ishtar leaned her head against his back, inclining it towards the ground.

“This is… terribly forward of me, Lord Ares, but I don’t want you to leave.”

Ares relaxed. He let out a deep breath, staying still for Ishtar. “...Do you feel anything?”

“No,” she admitted. “I think it will take some time. But when you turned to leave, I had a thought. That I didn’t want to be left alone. That I needed… someone. Lord Ares, would it be okay… if you stayed a little longer?”   


His eyes flickered across the forest, glancing a few times at the path to the town. They were alone now, but someone might catch them. Would he mind? He looked down, seeing Ishtar’s hands - one gloved, one ungloved - around his, and smiled, moving his hand to settle atop hers.

“It’s no trouble.”

Ares always prayed alone, but he didn’t mind company.

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled Ishtar instead of Lucina on the legendary banner so the least I can do is write a drabble for her.
> 
> I imagine Ares/Ishtar to be a very slow burn, but I did my best to characterize its beginning in ~2500 words. I also meant to have her bury her ring at the base of the cedar tree but maybe that'll happen later in their relationship heheh


End file.
